Timmy's Adv 55

[timmy827]

Just under the wire, it's 11:59 PM Pacific time Tuesday...well crap, bit of snag losing my password on the new forum. And the dog ate my homework

Summary:
Chose Justinian, won in 1450AD

Turn 205, becomes 187 with the 18-turn handicap.

Decided that even with civic changes off, 63 half price temples and 18 turn handicap makes Spiritual an obvious choice. There was one downside I had to discover later...
If you haven't, go read T-hawk's G-minor 99 . It explains a lot of the basics well. Of course there are differences when you aren't playing Chieftain but it's a good blueprint.

Oh and it was a blast. Good idea from Swiss, much enjoyed

[timmy827]

Went with nonreligious opening. We start with Mysticism and Wheel, I went Ag->Pottery->AH->Mining. Let's get these supercottages going fast! Turns out I could have had Buddhism safely, oh well.



Had to laugh at this. I feel over my civ career, I'm quite satisfied with the combat RNG but any scouts I pop from huts have just dismal lifespans.

Second city (and legend):



The monument build felt suboptimal, the Oracle coming from that Preisthood research would guarantee a religion spread. (If it's not the holy city, the missionary goes there). But it really needed the culture pronto as I wanted that city working the sheep and many FP cottages first. Also in tech order, I went straight to Oracle after mining and left Bronze Working for trade, didn't seem needed with bare hills at both cities and no slaving.

I decided not to found the next legend next but instead one of the better support-city locations:



The reason for delaying was that by far the best legend site needed Iron Working:



As you can see I had an idea to prevent the barb city but didn't get a warrior up there fast enough. I compounded this error severely by not looking inside - for some reason, the city started with warriors not archers! (Wonder if that's a byproduct of Swiss needing to do some worldbuilder in the scenario setup?) I didn't check that until 975BC and didn't capture the city until 850BC:



in addition blew some gold on warrior->axe upgrades instead of just building axemen. (At the point iron was connected, it was a few turns faster to upgrade than building fresh axes/swords; was paranoid on having an AI come by and swipe it as all other legend #3 options were far weaker). I was lucky that a lone AI unit didn't snipe the city from me, if I had seen only warriors I could have probably zergswarmed it much earlier myself.

This was a problem because I knew Mycenian would be slow to catch up due to the heavy jungle and having all bonuses in the 2nd ring, and few chopping forests. (However it did get some catchup from terrain - lots of grassland and it could maintain the +7 food surplus from size 3 to 16, eventually passing the first two cities in cottage count because they had more plains and hills). The paucity of hills did mean Mycenian was quite short on production until towns started maturing.

After Oracle, went straight to Alpha, reached at 1440BC. There was some significant brokering available and I picked up the following over the next few turns:
Bronze Working
Fishing
Archery
IW
Polytheism
Monotheism

More early-trading than normal, but these AI have reasonably generous trading limits and we don't need to tech far at all.

Religion breakdown:
My original plan was to let the first two go and try to cleansweep the rest. However this didn't work out, Judaism was found very early for Monarch at 2800BC. Oracle Code of Laws worked, as did a straight teching of Theology after the Alpha-trading round. Originally I had hoped to normal-tech CoL and Oracle Theo but worried about fast tech pace and took the sooner Oracle instead. (As a nice bonus, these religions went in the two non-capital legendaries without a real effort to game it that way). And as planned, that locked up Divine Right safely for further down the line. Hatty got Taoism in 350BC with a Great Scientist just as I started my run to Philo but luckily I got a random-spread in just two turns.

As for the first three: Hinduism came in early by random spread in 825BC. However the other new cities largely struck out - Hindu came in instead of the two I missed (Buddhism and Judiasm). And Mansa built some missionaries I saw in my lands but for some reason I don't understand, they all passed through to FDR and none were ever used on me. So that was a problem...

Of course more cities were needed, and it was bit challenging to find decent spots. This was a good reach location:



It eventually became clear there was no marble. Will be interesting to see how many others got this Stone. Felt lucky as I didn't find it all that early and it is close to Gandhi's capital...but on the other hand a pretty blah location overall for a normal city so maybe it was common for the AI to not settle it fast. There was also some more expansion at barb's expense:



This one took a bit more firepower, I believe that since I traded for Archery earlier that may be what caused it to spawn with Archers instead of warriors. This was planned to be the Great Artist farm. Another decent temple builder would soon be founded at the pigs/iron location to its south, which got the initial roster of 9 cities.

Techwise, I decided to finish Divine Right before going up the Aesthetics/Music branch, largely because the Oracle's prophet took out most of the research cost. I did get the free Artist and settled him in Mycenian, but with no marble and no state religion I passed on Sistine. Got a late Hangning Gardens at 125AD with the stone, very useful as all 9 cities had been founded. Also did more wheeling and dealing at the calendar change, picking up Metal Casting, Feudalism, Currency, and Philosophy through some trade and broker. Later I got HBR in an always peace game so I could put it in a package to Mansa with Machinery. Selfteched paper and then PP, reached at 540AD which was the last primary tech goal for a while. (Waiting on Nationalism until Civil Service could be traded for)

Rushbuying: I really wasn't sure how to plan the cutoff between rush buying and . I did decide that the best way to balance out the cities was to buy two cathedrals in the slow-developing Mycenian (choosing the Hindu and Islam, since I would have the stone/copper multipliers for the other religions), did that around 800AD. Bought only a few missionaries, it seemed that aside from getting the first spread or two it was ok to build normally. Was fast enough to keep the legends building cathedrals, and even when there was a few turns delay that was OK as they had other decent culture payoff buildings (Hippodromes, monasteries)

Many wonders were passed on, the legends built none besides Oracle and Hanging Gardens in capital. I did task one of my other cities to build the two golden age wonders as the best way to contribute from a nonlegend city:



Did it with the superchop on the last turn, as part of risk minimization (could turn the forests to somethign else if others built MOM first.) Fred got a great engineer while this was going on but thankfully picked Great Library from a long list of open wonders. Went on to a slow-building Taj after this. The golden ages did really help, nicely coming once most all cottages had fully matured. However having one of my best non-legend cities stuck on the wonders for so long was a significant slowdown in religion spread.

Speaking of which, my religion shortage was solved with some luck. First, with a flip:



The eventual flip didn't come until 780AD but looked like a sure eventual way to get Buddhism. (It's there, obsurced by the revolt fist...)
And I got stupid lucky, rolled the dice on another filler city (10th total) and jackpot!



Apostolic Palace was built by Buddhist Mansa - it took me a while to remember/notice I could still get +2 hammers from Buddhist buildings even if I have no state religion, after which those were duly prioritized ahead of other faiths.

One way I got burned a bit on civ choice.



The Hippodrome has no Artist slots!, so I had to go all the way to Globe Theatre to get 3 artist slots. Ugh. That is correctly listed in the Civilopedia, but that kind of thing would never have crossed my mine to check beforehand. Shame as the city had plenty of food for 5 artists.

Anyways, we were basically down to the 'mechanical' part now, a lot of missionary and temple and cathedral queueing, culture slider on...one thing of note was a trade for Engineering. The road movement is nice and with Stone, Walls + Castle is the best building culture payoff after cathedral. Of course there was some more border creep:



Pretty cool feedback loop with Thesslonica stealing the US capitals forests, which my workers promptly turned into cathedrals for more culture stealing...That would be my only other flip (came too late to be of use, all cathedrals basically done at that point). However was pretty neat to get a national wonder without the required buildings in the deal:



One scientist started a golden age (Phoenician ran scientists while building the globe) about 1000AD, which helped Adrianople finish the Taj for a 2nd. At the time I thought I started them early - Mycenian still had some cottages growing - but was worried about a great engineer from a AI swiping the Taj. However the timing apeared to be right on as all the legends finished their cathedrals before the end of the 2nd.

The ending culture rates were about 1200/turn, little less for Mycenain (no wonders) and little more for Thessalonica (no wonders, but Hermitage).

I actually had an unused great artist at the end. By chance, the capital and Thessa wound up exactly tied. Of 4 great artists total, one settled and two bombs caught up Mycenain but there was no way to speed further...with the extra gold I had at end, maybe it would have made sense to make a run for Economics merchat for a golden age. Well, nah, forseeing the two cities would be tied would have taken an absurd amount of prediction.

1450AD really doesn't seem that great with the big gifts we were given. No marble is part of that but wonder how much. I know we can't compare to T-hawks game (Cheiftan hut popping, Epic, Fast Workers). But in this BOTM (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/results/inde...bmit=Reset) I posted 1405AD and the fastest culture was 1350...fairly normal map, Emperor with some stunted AI starts, was Epic speed though. Wonder if the lack of Slavery offsets a lot of the Emanicpation? Or did I just screw up with not fogbusting my legendary site and delaying it for the barbs....I supposed needing the monasteries was part of it as well.

[kjn]

Impressive game!

[T-hawk]

As you can see I had an idea to prevent the barb city but didn't get a warrior up there fast enough. I compounded this error severely by not looking inside - for some reason, the city started with warriors not archers! (Wonder if that's a byproduct of Swiss needing to do some worldbuilder in the scenario setup?)

Hmm. Monarch AIs start with Archery so the barbarians should get it quickly. I don't know if Swiss ended up with the AIs lacking it, or if your barb city appeared so fast that the barbs just didn't get the tech yet.

But a barb city appearing exactly on your chosen legendary spot -- I don't know whether to call that a stroke of incredible luck or miserable unluck. Probably some of both; obviously like 1 tile off that spot would be bad.

My original plan was to let the first two go and try to cleansweep the rest. However this didn't work out, Judaism was found very early for Monarch at 2800BC.

Yeah, Judaism never works, one AI will always go there too fast even if it's self-crippling by skipping the worker techs. Problem for the human is that both prereqs are essentially dead techs, Poly if you don't get the religion and Masonry if not building Pyramids. The real cost of Monotheism is like all three of those techs together, and for that cost you might as well be hitting Code of Laws instead.

And Mansa built some missionaries I saw in my lands but for some reason I don't understand, they all passed through to FDR and none were ever used on me. So that was a problem...

I got that too. I actually paid Mansa to cancel deals (open borders) with FDR, hoping the missionaries would come to me instead, but they didn't and I don't know where they did go. I did eventually get Mansa's religion, don't remember if it was missionary or random spread.

Apostolic Palace was built by Buddhist Mansa - it took me a while to remember/notice I could still get +2 hammers from Buddhist buildings even if I have no state religion

Same happened to me.

1450AD really doesn't seem that great with the big gifts we were given. No marble is part of that but wonder how much.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Besides no Marble, we were also stuck with one fairly weak trait in Imp rather than a power pair. But I think the biggest time drain was the weakness of the legendary sites. Only one food resource at the east floodplains, and the jungle/gems site took a long time to bootstrap. You can suffer one weak legendary (it'll get all the Great Works) but not two. My G-minor 99 had one site that was an AI capital with two 6-food resources and jumpstarted by being at size 3 when captured, and the other was comparable to but a bit better than your Thessalonica (corn > sheep).

Also Free Religion hurt. It's just terrible for a culture game, you don't need the happy or the research and it kills Sistine. Org Rel is miles better since temple+cathedral build speed is the limiting factor.

[Swiss Pauli]

Oh and it was a blast. Good idea from Swiss, much enjoyed

You're most welcome! And thanks for taking the time to play and report :P

[SevenSpirits]

Hmm. Monarch AIs start with Archery so the barbarians should get it quickly.

Barbs are an AI civ; they start with archery if the AIs do.

However, in a scenario (i.e. if you edit the WBsave), no information is stored about the barbarian civ, so they lose all their starting techs. Of course the barbs will get beakers into it for free every turn since everyone knows it, but it takes a long time for them to learn techs this way, especially cheap ones. This is because they gain some percent of the tech every turn (I don't remember, maybe 3% or so?) and it gets rounded down to the nearest beaker, which means a bigger chunk of that X% gets truncated on average for cheaper techs.